Sea star ossicles from the Callovian black clays of the Lukow area, eastern Poland

Two hundred seventeen starfish skeletal remains have been sorted from sieve residuals of ca. 150 kilograms of clays collected in the Lukow brick-pit. The skeletal plates are poorly preserved due to intense bioerosion and mechanical abrasion that occurred between death and definitive burial into sediment. Only 90 marginal and abactinal plates can be assigned to taxon. Height taxa are recognised: ? Pentasteria sp., ? Advenaster sp. Benthopectinidae indet., Pulcinellaster lukowensis nov. sp., Goniasteridae indet., ? Comptoniaster sp., Poncetaster crateri, and Stauranderasteridae indet. Similar taxa are known from other Jurassic clay deposits, especially in the Paris Basin, but the high-level of diversity and the relative abundance of taxa are uncommon at Lukow. Heterogeneity of preservation among the starfish skeletal plates suggests that the species found at Lukow did not all live at the depositional site. Most plates were probably transported from shallower environments and mixed.